The fim MotoGP' first post-season test, following the end of last year's last race (November 14, 2021, Valencia, Spain), took place at the Jerez Circuit in Spain, november 18-19 last year.
At the MotoGP level, all race cars use Michelin tires uniformly. Since 2016, Michelin Tires has replaced the previous Bridgestone Bridgestone as a unified tire supplier at the MotoGP level. In September last year, Michelin and Dorna Sport (the promotion company of MotoGP) signed a new contract, and the MotoGP level will continue to use Michelin tires until 2026.
In the 2021 season, Michelin brought a new formulation of tires to MotoGP-level events, and the core of the new change is that there are fewer choices of tire softness and hardness than before, making it easier for teams to operate in terms of tires. In each race, each MotoGP-level driver operates in terms of tire usage as follows:
1. Dry ground tires (Slick Tyres, bald tires without tire lines):
1. Each race, each car can get 22 dry tires, including 10 front tires and 12 rear tires;
2, the front tire, according to the soft, medium and hard three different tread hardness, up to five different formulas each;
3. The choice of rear tires is six soft tire distribution, five medium hardness formulas, and four hard tire formulas;
4. Two drivers who advance from Q1 to Q2 (Note: the top two in Q1 can advance to Q2) can get an additional front and rear tires, and soft, medium and hard tire formulas can be selected.
Second, rain tires:
1. The standard configuration is 13 tires (front 6 and rear 7), and there are soft and medium formulas;
2. Special circumstances: If five sessions of practice (Note: four sessions of free practice, one session of warm-up) and four of the qualifying races are declared Wet wetlands by the race, an additional set of rain tires (front + rear) will be assigned to each driver;
3. Special circumstances: If both Q1 and Q2 are declared Wet, the extra tyres allocated will be rain tyres, and for drivers, they need to think about what kind of tyres to use at the start;
4. In addition, if the weather conditions (dry land, wetlands) issued by the race at Q1 and Q2 are different, no additional tires will be allocated.
What changes have the new formulation of tyres brought about? One of the most immediate results is to help the MotoGP drivers break the fastest lap record for most tracks in the 2021 season – eighteen stations, a total of 14 tracks (Qatar, Austria, San Marino and Portugal, these four tracks have two races), except for Jerez in Spain, Le Mans in France, Sachsenring in Germany, With the exception of Silverstone in the United Kingdom, Valencia in the United States, Valencia in Spain, and Portugal's return to MotoGP, the fastest lap times record of the remaining seven tracks have been refreshed, with a proportion of more than 50%, while some of the new records have reached the level of a few seconds faster.
Picture below, MotoGP 2021 Spain Jerez (2022) pre-season test site.
Image credit: Michelin.
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